[SMHarman]

Interview with Philip Glennister / Gene Hunt in the Times Culture section today...

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle3241252.ece

A teaser...

When Gene Hunt steps out of his Audi Quattro and into Ashes to Ashes, the first thing we see is a snakeskin cowboy boot. It slaps onto the concrete outside a derelict industrial building, then stands as the camera crawls up the solid, nononsense frame above its pointy toe and cuban heel. Finally, the lens comes to rest on Hunt’s stern, craggy face, and his laconic Manchester drawl rings out across the car park: “Today, my friend, your diary entry will read, ‘Took a prozzie hostage and was shot by three armed *******s.’ ”

It’s beautiful timing. Until Hunt’s arrival, the sequel to Life on Mars has been more than slightly upsetting. The effervescent Keeley Hawes plays Alex Drake, a police psychologist who receives a tape from an officer – Sam Tyler – who has just committed suicide. (Okay, wait: if you didn’t see the hit BBC series Life on Mars, here’s what you need to know. Tyler had an accident and woke up in 1973. Was he mad, or in a coma, or had he been taken back in time? Whatever happened, it was as if he had landed on a different planet. He thought that maybe, if he could work out the reason he was there, he could get home. Then he killed himself.)

Drake has a daughter, and is driving her to school when she gets involved in a hostage situation with a gunman who has asked for her by name. Awful things happen, and her poor daughter seems in terrible jeopardy. Then Drake takes a bullet to the head and wakes up on a boat on the Thames. Before she can say “Why am I dressed as a prostitute at a party where the only music they are playing is from 1981?”, she’s in a scuffle with a posh drug-dealer, and we don’t know why, what’s happened to her daughter, whether she’s dying or what on earth she’s doing in 1981. Then Gene Hunt arrives, and we know everything’s going to be all right.

---------- Post added at 18:29 ---------- Previous post was at 18:27 ----------

I imagine there are going to be some interesting Gene Hunt isms. If they are continuing with Gene knowing Sam in the past and his mad ramblings about cellphones and cotton mills being turned into luxury apartments then he is going to start discovering that the rants were not so mad!